Florida vs Germany: Air Conditioning

As someone who grew up in Florida, I've always known life with air conditioning. In Florida, it's a practical requirement, given how hot and humid it is for most of the year. When I moved to Europe a year ago, I expected to find less AC. What I didn't expect was to find a completely opposite attitude towards it.

Air Conditioning units - Source

Coming up on a year

I know it's been several months since my last blog post. There's a lot that goes through my mind, and I quite honestly don't find the energy often enough to write these posts. But this blog post isn't about my writing. It's about looking back at the past year.

This week marks a year since I left my job in the US. It marks a year since I took the big leap into the unknown. I had no job lined up in Europe, and I wasn't even sure which city I'd ultimately end up in. My hope was that I'd get something in Berlin (and I sure did!). My parents thought I was a bit crazy for doing this, but supported me nonetheless.

Banking in Germany

Now that I've been living in Germany for almost 6 months, I've gotten a better feeling for the differences between life here and in the US. One thing that quickly became apparent was the different approaches to banking. In Germany (and really most of Europe), banking systems seem to be more secure, use the IBAN system throughout the SEPA, and Germans are somewhat distrusting of credit cards.

Image Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dskley/8647962765/